A mix of grey- and pastel-toned buildings on San Rafael Street in central Habana stand in stark testimony to part of the effects of a cruel U.S. embargo on life in Cuba. I was standing on the street looking for a textile co-op.

(You won’t make much sense of this valentine blog unless you watch Billie Holiday’s 8-minute performance with a group of the best of jazzmen from the 1950s. Also, pay close attention to a voice over she does that tells you exactly what is coming.)

After our article Crowdfunding Worker Co-ops: 15 Examples came out, Anton from dna merch in Berlin, Germany contacted us via email about their current crowdfunding campaign to "support workers in Croatia and South Asia with limited band t-shirts". Supporters purchase t-shirts from their favorite bands, a worker co-op makes the shirts, and a portion of the proceeds go to

[Editors note: We're excited to announce two new ebooks from Las Indias, a trans-national, egalitarian community. These books were translated from the original Spanish by Level Translation and are now available in English for the first time. Below you will find a short excerpt and a preview chapter from each book. If you would like to download a copy (in .epub, .pdf, and Kindle-compatible formats), just click the buttons below--you can even make a contribition to help Level and GEO keep bringing you these in

[Editor's note: Below is the preface and introduction to GEO founding member Len Krimerman's new memoir, Coming Alive in Dangerous Times (1961-1983). We will be publishing Len's memoir serially, every Monday, over the next month, starting with Chapter 1, A New York Yankee in Louisiana,next week . Here, Len discusses how he came to write a memoir, the value of memiorizing our life stories, and lays out the plan of the book. GEO will be releasing Coming Alive as an ebook this fall.]